DM Monitoring
CHANGSHA: China’s Shibadong village, the birthplace of “targeted poverty alleviation,” has lifted all families out of poverty, sending a heartening message as the nation scrambles to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of this year.
The village in central China’s Hunan Province has seen the poverty headcount ratio drop to zero, down from 57 percent in 2013, said Shi Jintong, Party chief of the village, in an interview with Xinhua.
Home to 225 families and 939 villagers, Shibadong’s per capita net annual income increased more than eight times, from 1,668 yuan (238 U.S. dollars) in 2013 to 14,668 yuan in 2019, Shi said.
The once-impoverished village has been closely watched as a testing ground for “targeted poverty alleviation,” first put forward there in 2013. This concept of designing relief policies to suit different local situations later became a guiding principle in China’s fight against poverty.
Faced with rugged terrain and scarcity of arable land, the village has substituted traditional crop planting with more profitable kiwi farming and developed other businesses that suit local conditions, including the tourism and embroidery industries that prosper on the local ethnic Miao culture.
Shi Basan, a 70-year-old local villager, was amazed by the speed of change.
“Back in 2013, the only thing ‘electric’ in my house was a light bulb, and meat was a luxurious food for us,” said Shi, whose family cast off poverty by joining a kiwi cooperative.
“Now we eat meat whenever we want, and we have extra meat to make preserved pork for sale,” she said.
Ma Huihuang, a township official assigned to Shibadong to aid the poverty-reduction drive, accredited the success to the launch of local industries that have helped the village wean itself off external aid.
The official said the most difficult part of the campaign was that some families either lack income-earners or had been dragged down by medical or educational burdens. They now receive dividends from the booming industries and benefit from local policies that exempt them from medical and educational fees. The COVID-19 epidemic brought a temporary lull to the village’s tourism business, but locals said the quick recovery in business has boosted their confidence.
“We had no income in the first quarter due to COVID-19. But since the epidemic is under control now, tourists have returned to the village in large numbers. We can surely recoup the losses in the months to come,” said Shi Quanyou, who runs a family inn.
Saturday marks World Population Day. China has slashed the number of people living in poverty by more than 700 million since 1978, making it the first developing country to meet the United Nations target of halving its poor population.
Yet the country is still in an uphill battle to enrich millions of people who still live below the poverty line, to achieve the goal of eliminating absolute poverty by the end of this year, in a country with a population of 1.4 billion.
Across the country, rural industries like the ones in Shibadong have helped many shake off poverty. Others have improved their lot through such major measures as relocation, ecological compensation and education. Social security allowances are given to the sick, the disabled and others who cannot work their way out of extreme poverty.
